


It's hard when the sky is green

by Kirjava3456airbender



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Body Horror, Hanahaki AU, M/M, but better safe than sorry, except not really, not really sure if i should tag graphic violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:08:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25854112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirjava3456airbender/pseuds/Kirjava3456airbender
Summary: In the world of Avatar, hanahaki is more than just flowers in your lungs. The plants around the heartbroken love the taste of heartache.
Relationships: (one-sided though), Aang/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 78





	It's hard when the sky is green

**Author's Note:**

> i honestly have no idea what this is. i'm sorry. (yes i am aware im just procrastinating my multi-chapter, thanks for asking)

Aang realizes he’s fallen in love when the sunflowers start pointing at him instead of the sun. 

I say he realizes because the love has obviously been hiding within him for months, if it’s progressed this far. That’s the most dangerous kind of love, isn’t it? The kind that sneaks in disguised as friendship or even family, that kind of love that doesn’t bloom from the sight of pretty eyes or soft skin, but from an ugly yet endearing laugh or tender hands feeding baby turtleducks.

So no, Aang’s love doesn’t slam into him or starts with butterflies in his stomach, his love grows from fondness. In some ways he thinks he was always meant to love Zuko, ever since they were both born with the weight of the world on their shoulders, it’s always been them. 

When Aang realizes he’s in love he’s not surprised, but he is in pain. According to the sunflowers, it’s unrequited. His chest aches as soon as he diagnoses himself with Hanahaki. It’s rare, nowadays, but as much as he loathes to admit, Aang is technically old, a hundred years away from his original time, back when Hanahaki wasn’t exactly common but still common enough to not be treated as an old wive’s tale or an old people illness. He half-heartedly wonders why newer generations don’t get Hanahaki anymore, it’s certainly not because they love less intensely, not with the way Sokka sometimes still stares at the full moon. Maybe whatever old spirit had conjured up the illness had grown tired of it and had forgiven humanity, leaving the sickness only within Aang.

Unrequited love.

What a load of badgermole shit.

The thing with Hanahaki is that it’s not exactly a sickness as much as a curse put on the plant life around a heartsick person. It’s almost like it brings them to life, and what do you know, plants apparently feed off broken hearts, especially from unrequited love.

Aang’s the avatar, he thinks that if he really tried he could probably stave off the plants for a while, maybe even the rest of his life, he could stop their spores from entering his lungs, drain their water before they got to him, but he’s tired. After fighting a war that had been thrust upon him because of powers he had never asked for and spending years pacifying spirits and doing diplomatic work, he’s just so tired. He’s barely in his twenties, but he feels ancient, like a half destroyed temple overrun by ivy and eroded by saltwater.

Aang thinks he could fight off the plant life. He just doesn’t want to.

He half-wishes he could tell his friends, but he knows what they would say, they’d urge him to tell Zuko, that maybe his love isn’t unrequited, but magic doesn’t work like that. The plants seek true half-love and half-devotion, they feed on the apathy the other party feels for the carrier of the sickness. And Zuko would feel so guilty, he’s sweet like that. He’d probably try to make himself love Aang but nothing good has ever come out of forcing feelings, to put pressure on the soul only brings resentment. Never love.

So instead he writes them letters, endless goodbyes and love yous, no explanations, leaves them on his bedroll and fervently hopes someone will read Toph’s to her. He rubs Momo between his ears and kisses Appa’s enormous nose, before he opens his glider and flies away from his life. He’s barefoot.

He flies into the depth of a forest with no name, thick with luscious trees and the smell of sap and dirt, here he knows that it will be quick. As soon as he lands, the fireflycicadas fly away and he’s utterly alone. Well, not really, the trees are watching.They move slowly, like predators, slowly obscuring the moon with their foliage and Aang is prepared to die but he’s still so fucking scared. Airbenders have no use for any g-ds but he still drops to his knees and prays to a pantheon that isn’t his, he prays that Zuko will be happy.

It’s as if the sky goes green.

The sky is like velvet and a bottle of wine and a sea of pinetrees. 

And there are no stars, only dark green blankets over his head.

In the ocean of vegetation, the plantlife keeps finding ways to curl around each other like young lovers, caging him in green, always green.

The ground is soft and pure _earth_ under his feet, his toes dig into the dirt and he’s breathing so hard his chest is groaning and creaking like an old vessel in a tumultuous sea. The storm is green.

He feels his heart in his chest, curled up like a scared child and the sharp lemony taste of fear in his throat. Everything can hide in the endless vast oceans of the forest, evil spirits and demons and dandelions.

Tiny plants claw at his feet and he rips them from the ground with desperate hands, his fingernails are broken and his palms split open but the blood looks green in the great cave of the woods. The plants decay in his hands and turn into dust that burns his injuries. He’s crying. He’s in love and it hurts and he’s scared and he’s crying for a parent he has never known.

Some of the trees bend over him like tender mothers and caress his face and arms but he bats them away and they buzz like angered wasps.

It’s too late when he notices the vines growing out of his palms, the roots slithering under his skin like veins and he lets out a scream that tears through his throat like glass and skins his tongue. He’s begging them to let him go but his feet have sunk into the mulch and the trees keep up their angry vibrations, the noise almost unbearable.

He screams again when the leaves start poking from his tear ducts, rolling out from under his eyeballs and squeezing them until they pop. 

There are flowers in his lungs and they burst out around his tongue, tearing the lips in a sticky mix of sap and blood.

When the fireflycicadas come back, everything is silent, (except for the gulping) and the trees retreat.

The green consumes.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact, the inspiration for this shit came from the line "it's hard when the sky is green" from this specific drawfee video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNDS1_iZz_s blease watch it, it's a really good time if you like art and banter and doesn't have anything to do with people eating plants.


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